


there's a love i've been keeping aside

by wafflesofdoom



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Biphobia, Bisexuality, Coming Out, Established Relationship, Honesty, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 13:45:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8892943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflesofdoom/pseuds/wafflesofdoom
Summary: after their win at the pub quiz, robert is over the moon - and aaron's mind is still on rebecca white and the threat he thinks she poses to his relationship.it leads to a well overdue conversation about robert's bisexuality.





	

“We’re the pub quiz masters, eh? We absolutely smashed it tonight.” Robert commented, hanging his leather jacket over the back of the desk chair in Aaron’s room, pushing his shirt sleeves up past his elbows. He was absolutely _buzzing_ after their win at the quiz, enjoying their victory over David and Tracy a little bit too much.

Robert just liked to win, if he was honest. 

“Mm.” Aaron nodded, toeing off his sneakers. “Rebecca’s still hanging around you a lot, isn’t she?”

Robert raised an eyebrow. “She sat at the other end of the bar to us and had a drink, Aaron. She barely said two words to us.”

Aaron shrugged, sitting down on the edge of their bed. He was still wearing his hoodie, the black material yanked down over his hands, a telltale sign that he was getting stuck in his own head, getting anxious. “Still. She’s got a family to annoy, hasn’t she? Don’t see why she’s got to spend her time following you around.”

Robert sighed, crossing his arms across his chest. “Is this about what Moira said the other night? Because she was pissed out of her mind, and it was ridiculous. I only helped Rebecca out with some business stuff, I didn’t jump her in the middle of your mum’s pub.”

“Yeah, but you’re still helping her, even after I said I didn’t like ya being involved.” 

“I don’t want her, Aaron.” Robert crossed the room so he was standing in front of his fiancé, giving him a serious look. “I don’t know how many times I’ve got to tell you, or what I’ve got to do to show you that I’m not lying to you. I don’t want Rebecca, or anyone else for that matter.”

Aaron gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Aaron, come on. This is supposed to be one of the happiest weeks of our lives! You’ve just bought a house, for godssake.” Robert pulled out the desk chair, sitting down across from Aaron. “I’m not going to cheat on you. I know I mightn’t think things though sometimes and thats why all that happened with Rebecca, but I would _never_ cheat on you.”

Aaron looked up. “Well, you know what they say, once a cheater, always a cheater. And it’s not like you haven’t got _plenty_ of options.”

Robert rolled his eyes. “Oh, this again, is it?”

“Oh, yeah Robert, please make fun of the way I’m feeling, that really helps things.”

“Aaron, my _sexuality_ is making you insecure. I’m going to find that a little bit baffling, because its the one thing I don’t have any control over, and you know that as well as I do!”

“Since when are you such an out and proud bisexual? A couple of months ago you were still refusing to go to gay bars and pretending like you didn’t have a label for what you were feeling!” 

Robert didn’t say anything for a second.

“I just want to understand, Robert.” Aaron said, almost pleadingly.

“Fine. Let’s talk about this.” Robert said. “But you need to be a bit open minded here Aaron, because however much you might deny it, you’re still very black and white when it comes to sexuality - you like men or women, and there’s no in between, and God, it drives me _insane_.”

“Oh yeah, because _I_ don’t understand sexuality!”

“Well you clearly don’t understand mine, and sometimes you make me feel like I can’t talk to you about it, because you give me this look - this look that just says Robert, will you pick a bloody side and be done with it.”

“I - I don’t mean to.”

“But you do.”

“Fine then, I’m sorry.” Aaron said. “But I don’t actually know any bisexual people, so this feels a bit new to me. Anyone I’ve ever been with has been gay. So, just talk to me about this, and I’ll promise I’ll understand. I just don’t get why you called yourself straight for so long when it’s really obvious that you’re not.”

Robert didn’t say anything, trying to gather his thoughts. How do you even begin to explain fifteen years of repressing your own sexuality? 

“I told you, about my dad catching me with that farm hand.” 

Tom. He had been a proper Yorkshire lad, heavy set and ridiculously tall, his muscles strong underneath the sleeves of his t-shirt. Robert’s mouth had practically been watering, the day he met him.

It had been his first _anything_ with a guy. Robert remembered the way his lips had felt against his own, the musky smell of sweat and dirt that could only come after a long day of working in the fields. 

Aaron nodded.

“After that happened, I tried to ignore the part of me that was attracted to men. I got off with girls, Donna and uh, Katie - and there were others. And I liked it, you know? I always liked sex.” Robert said, thinking back to his teenage years. “The whole liking guys thing didn’t come up again until my dad sent me away. Or at least I didn’t let it come up. I ended up living in Manchester for a while, treated the whole thing like a big adventure, because I had just turned twenty and it was kind of exciting for me - living out on my own, doing exactly what I wanted to do. _Whoever_ I wanted to.”

He looked at Aaron. “Did I ever tell you about my first time with a guy?”

Aaron shook his head. “No.” 

“It was when I was living in Manchester. I went out to a nightclub with my flatmates, can’t even remember the name of it now, and they introduced me to this friend of theirs, Mark. I think that was the first time since the farm hand that I really felt an attraction to another guy. He was gorgeous - not as gorgeous as you, obviously - but growing up in Emmerdale, it’s not like there were too many gorgeous, single guys for me to fawn over, y’know? God, I don’t think there was a _single_ out person living in the village when I was growing up.”

Robert was lost in thought now, reliving memories he hadn’t thought about for years. If he thought hard enough, he could remember the way Mark had felt under his hands, the way the hard planes of his stomach and the scratchy stubble on his face had felt, the sensation so alien compared to the way the girls he’d been with before had felt.

Alien, but not unwelcome.

Mark had been the opposite of the farmhand, calm and collected, an easy going twenty something who’d grown up in Manchester with a family who had accepted he was gay from the moment he had mentioned it.

He’d been all the better for it too. Confident in his sexuality in a way Robert had been jealous of at the time, Mark not so much as losing his breath when Robert had kissed him in the club, Robert himself on the verge of a bloody panic attack after it had happened. 

“The first time, I could nearly kid myself it wasn’t so wrong.” Robert said, not quite bringing himself to look at Aaron. “Mark was always happy to be the one on the bottom. Not so much a preference as a way of keeping me comfortable with the whole idea of having sex with another man, honestly. And in my head, that made it less wrong, and strange, because it’s not like I was the one with a dick in my ass.”

“ _Robert_.”

“I was twenty and **very** closeted and fairly repressed, Aaron, I really don’t know what you’re expecting here. I hardly got out on the balcony and started shouting about how much I loved dicks.”

“Sorry.” Aaron mumbled, his face reddening. “Keep going.”

“He was the first guy I ever bottomed for.” Robert said. “I _hated_ that I liked it. I really did. After it was over, I just felt so dirty because I’d liked it, I’d liked the way it felt. I left his in the middle of the night, and I cried the entire way home. And I never saw him again, and that was it for a while.”

“Until the next guy?”

“Until the next guy.” Robert confirmed. “I could pretend like I was straight easily, because I was always attracted to women. But then, I would meet a guy, and I’d feel the same way, and I hated it. I hated that I couldn’t control it, that no matter how much I tried to ignore it, that attraction was always there.”

“Why did you hate that part of you so much?” Aaron inquired, genuinely curious. “You were living away from here, and your family. It’s not like they would have ever found out, was it?”

“I always wanted my dad to love me the way he loved Andy.” Robert admitted. “Before Andy came along, me and dad - we always got on. I was the heir to everything he’d worked so hard for, the farm and everything, and whenever I’d go out and help him with the farm, he’d always talk about how one day it would all be mine, that I’d live there with my wife and kids.”

Robert blinked back furious tears. “Doesn’t leave much room for a husband, that fantasy, does it?"

Aaron didn’t know what to say.

“I loved my dad. I still do, I still love him. Because he’s my dad, and even after everything we did to each other, he was still my dad. That was always in my head, even when I was out on my own - I thought if I could get the wife and kids, I could go home to my family and he’d finally love me the way he loved Andy. That’d he be proud of me for turning into a proper family man, even if it had turned out that I didn’t want the farm, or the life he’d dreamed up for me, because family _always_ mattered the most to my dad.”

Robert choked back a sob, wiping roughly at his face. He could practically hear his dad, remembering all the conversations they’d had out in the fields, dreaming up this fairytale life for Robert, where he’d have a nice wife, and kids, and be worthy of passing the family farm along to.

Robert had never wanted to be a farmer, but there was a time he’d have done **a** **nything** if it had meant his father would look at him with the sort of pride he looked at Andy with, like he was worthy of the love that Jack Sugden, traditional family man, had to give.

“Robert..” Aaron reached out for him, clearly surprised when Robert shook his head, backing away.

“If I stop now, I’m never going to finish telling you all this, and I need you to trust me.” 

“I do trust you.”

“Not properly. Not if you think me being bisexual means I’ll cheat on you.”

“Okay.” Aaron settled back on their bed, tugging nervously at his sleeves again. “But if it’s too much, Robert..”

“It’s always going to be too much.” Robert said simply, taking a deep breath before he continued. “It was a cycle of that for years. I’d meet a guy, and I’d panic, and I’d pretend like I didn’t feel anything for them. I spent so long convincing myself it was _just_ sexual attraction, nothing more, and eventually I think I believed it. So, I dated women, and I slept with men, and that’s just how it was. Figured I could keep that up for the rest of my life, stupid as it sounds.”

“I mean, I used to think I could just be with women and pretend I wasn’t gay.” Aaron offered.

“But you accepted it, eventually.” Robert said. “I came home after ten years, a closet case with a fiancé that did my head in half the the time.”

Chrissie. 

Robert had loved her, he really had. Chrissie was exciting, and powerful, and sexy, and Robert had wanted her from the second he first met her - dressed to the nines in her fathers office, curious about the mysterious blonde with no family connections that her father had hired to expand the machinery business. 

“Are you going to get weird if I talk about Chrissie?” 

“Probably. But I’d rather hear it.” Aaron admitted.

Robert nodded. “She was everything I thought my dad would have wanted for me. Smart, beautiful - even came with a kid, no effort required. I came back and I was so excited to shove it in Andy’s face that I had succeeded, even though dad had sent me away, even though I’d had to make a go of it on my own.”

“You and Andy have a really weird relationship.” Aaron pulled a face.

“Yeah. We do.” Robert looked down at his engagement ring, thinking. The metal on his finger had found a home there now, after weeks of wearing it, but it still made Robert’s heart skip a beat when he noticed it as he was going about his day - when he handed money to Bob for a coffee, or reached for his car keys. He didn’t know a bit of metal could mean that much, if he was honest - his wedding ring never had. 

His wedding ring had felt like a contract, not a promise. 

“I did love her, Chrissie. Genuinely, I did. But I was never able to be myself with her, not completely, because there was this huge part of me I knew I was never going to tell her about. As if I could tell Chrissie White like I liked men and women, could you have imagined what her reaction would have been?”

“Just about.”

“When she came into the pub, yelling her head off about me having an affair with you - I thought I was going to have a heart attack.” Robert admitted, remembering the day the truth about the affair had come out, the day he’d been outed in the Woolpack. He'd felt like he was going to get sick, when the words had left Chrissie’s mouth, about him and Aaron sleeping together. 

He’d thought that was it, that was the end of any chance he had of making things right with his family and staying in Emmerdale for good. 

Robert blinked back fresh tears, shaking his head slightly. “I’d let myself think about what it would be like to be out, sometimes. I’d come home, and I’d tell Diane, and Vic, and Andy, and in my head, they’d be disgusted, they’d think there was something wrong with me, and they’d never speak to me again. I convinced myself they’re never accept it, that no one would, and it was like my _worst_ nightmare had happened.” 

Aaron looked visibly upset, but before he could say anything, Robert spoke again.

“Vic said she understood. That she didn’t see things in black and white, like everyone else seemed to. She said that she knew sexuality wasn’t in a box, that I could be attracted to whoever I liked.” Robert thought back to the conversation he and Victoria had in her house, just after Chrissie had told everyone about the affair. “I denied it.”

“Of course.” Aaron tried to joke.

“Of course.” Robert echoed. “But there was my little sister, understanding my sexuality better than I did, and it felt odd, because the world hadn’t come crashing down around me. My family knew I had slept with a man, and the only thing they cared about was that I’d cheated on my wife - it didn’t really matter that it was with a man, apparently.”

“But you didn’t come out then. You kept going back to Chrissie.”

“Because a part of me still thought I could salvage the life my dad would have wanted for me. The big house, the gorgeous wife - if I had all that, nothing else mattered. All the stuff going on in my head wouldn’t matter, and I’d be able to feel like he was proud of me because I had turned out to be a complete fuck up, not if I had someone like Chrissie White on my arm.”

Robert looked at Aaron, looked at him properly for the first time since their conversation had begun. “I always said I was straight because I wanted to be. I wanted to be normal. And I thought if I said it enough, it would be true. But thats not how sexuality works, and it took me a really long time to come to terms with it. That’s why I always said I was straight.” 

He moved, resting his elbows on his knees. “You helped me come to terms with it. For the first time in my entire life, I get to live a life where I’m being true to myself and who I am, and I get to live that truth with _you_ , Aaron, every single day. That means **everything** to me.”

Aaron let out a low breath, studying Robert’s face. His gaze was intense, a kind of intensity that should have made Robert uncomfortable, but he’d pretty much just bared his soul to his fiancé, so didn’t feel like it mattered. “I didn’t know."

“Because I never told you, and I should have. But I’m not good at talking about this kind of stuff, you know that. You don’t repress your sexuality for fifteen years and suddenly have a coming out party.” Robert grinned slightly, nudging one of Aaron’s feet with his own. “But I’m trying, Aaron, I really am.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” Aaron said. “God, Rob, I’m sorry I was so weird about you being bisexual. I didn’t realise you’d been through so much to accept it. I guess I just always thought you had it easier, because you could just sleep with a woman and forget about it.”

Robert looked more relaxed now, calmer than he had been when they’d started their conversation. “I’m bisexual.” He said firmly, confident in his own words in a way he never had been before. It felt good, it felt _right_ to be so certain about it. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to cheat, Aaron. No one else comes close to you, to what you mean to me - you’re everything, Aaron. There isn’t a single person out there, least of all Rebecca White, who can give me what you’ve given me.”

“Whats that then?”

“A home. A family.” Robert said, reaching for Aaron’s hand, closing his own over his, his fingers slipping under the material of his hoodie, warm against Aaron’s wrists. “A life where I feel like I can actually be myself for once.”

Aaron gave him a smile, a real, sincere smile that made Robert’s 

“Andy told me you make me a better person, just before he left.” Robert said. “You make me a better person because you’re the first person who’s ever let me just be myself. You don’t expect the pretence and the flash lifestyle, and you’ve not got this whole life dreamt up for me that you expect me to want. You just let me be me, Aaron. That’s why I’ll never cheat on you, because no one else is ever going to be able to give me that.”

“I love you.” Aaron said. “Robert, I love you so much. And I’m going to be better, I swear - I’m going to be better about all this.”

“I know. I just want you to be able to talk to me if you’re feeling insecure, not bottle it all up.” Robert said. “We’re getting married, Aaron, and I need that to be forever, so don’t let stupid comments, or anyone else make you feel like you’re not enough for me. Because you are, you’re enough for me Aaron. No one else is ever going to understand what we have, but I need to know that _you_ understand.”

“I do.” Aaron reassured, pulling Robert toward him. He looped his arms around Robert’s neck, pressing a kiss to the underside of his jaw, his lips soft and his beard rough against his skin, the combination making Robert’s eyes flutter shut. “I do. I understand.”

“Okay.” 

Robert let himself be held by Aaron, thinking back to the twenty year old version of himself who’d wandered the streets of Manchester at four in the morning, wishing he could take back the sex he’d just had, the sex with a _man_ , the sex he’d enjoyed so much. 

The twenty year old who would have never believed he’d ever be able to be in a proper relationship with a man, let alone be engaged to one and living in Emmerdale, of all faces.

Robert could remember the way he’d felt that night, if he thought hard enough. The way his stomach had twisted, scared of how much he’d like what he’d just done, the tears that had ran down his cheeks as he walked home, the city quiet save for his hysterical sobbing. 

It had been one of the worst nights of his entire life, if he was honest - because thats when Robert knew that his attraction to men wasn’t going to stay hidden forever, and he’d have to face it one day if it didn’t ignore it hard enough. 

It had taken such a long time, but Robert was glad of everything he’d gone through to accept his bisexuality, because all of it had led to the gorgeous man in his arms, and that was enough to make up for the tears, and the years of pretending like it was a phase.

It was enough, because Aaron was enough.

He was _everything_.

**Author's Note:**

> my original intention with this was to write it from both of their point of views, but robert is just a character i identify with more, i suppose, so this happened. (lol identify with i just wrote 3,600 words on his sexuality its fair to say i'm obsessed with robert sugden.)
> 
> fairly dialogue heavy i know, but i hope you enjoyed it all the same!


End file.
